


An Eternal Song, A Choir of Two, &  the Only Harmony That Matters

by FoxNPhoenix



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 20:02:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20315215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxNPhoenix/pseuds/FoxNPhoenix
Summary: A.Z. Fell, Bookseller, has a back room to the back room.  It houses a VERY private collection.  Not even the ANGEL goes in there much.





	An Eternal Song, A Choir of Two, &  the Only Harmony That Matters

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Tumblr's @fictions-stranger for looking over this SEVERAL TIMES! You are the bomb, epic human!

AZIRAPHALE

There are sheaves upon sheaves of written love songs in every form humans remember, and several they never thought up – squirreled away in the back room to the back room of A.Z. Fell, Bookseller’s shop in Soho. The most private of private collections. Not even Mr Fell peruses these too often.

The literature of the Pre-Enochian world, before the Fall ever happened; yes, the angel had sung his own compositions – quietly, to himself – all about the angel whose hair was flame and whose wings were full of stars, his eyes golden with wonder – always. It was natural to love that intensely. Of course. Nothing inappropriate. Nothing strange in that. He who walks the stars, dances along the Milky Way’s royal road flinging planetary systems right and left - Jackson Pollock’s first influence - that fire haired being surely does not know. All is well; or at least, all is not Wrong.

Things happened, and the Fall, and the angel with the flaming hair and stars in his wings was gone. And Aziraphale’s anxiety begins. No more quiet composing to himself. Not for a long, long time. Instead, stolen hums inside his head, a vague memory no one can corroborate. Even the mention of a vague memory strikes fear into the others’ eyes. He stops asking, and is justifiably proud when he gets an assignment earthside, thinking nothing of it, unaware that he remembers too much - even though ‘too much’ is the merest fragment of a Nothing seared into the angel’s soul that can only be filled with the Burning Light of Knowledge. 

Lilith sings. And is Removed, and called a demon for her passion, for her refusal to accept Injustice and Subjugation based on nothing more than a mere equal human’s refusal to acknowledge the full humanity of her as their life partner. Lilith was bright and witty, reminded him so much of the music of the spheres and wonder and auburn impressions in the sunsets. The unabashed Fires of Life Fully Aware of Its Worth, and unapologetic entirely - as is only right.

Eve is put in her place, and her ignorance and subjugation are meant to be ensured. By the Guardian of the Eastern Gate. Eve just needed ‘protecting’, a shadow of a being, not fully formed. Though all that was a lie, and Aziraphale knew it. But such was that Child’s lot – to be protected from her own curiosity, from her Spouse. from her elder sister Lilith, from her own Reality and Truth. This job is starting to really suck. 

If the gossip came to anything, and if the angel knew Lilith’s character at all, it did not – no one must be protected from She Who Is Justice for the Oppressed, unless they are in the habit of Oppressing - Lilith planned to steal Eve’s child. It did not happen, because the First Woman is not so evil, nor so cruel, though false reports won out in the end.

Even with this drama, the angel does not weave his songs into the new-born world. Not yet. Not even when a serpent stands near him, watching the Children walk away, asking, eyes wide, “Didn’t you have a flaming sword?” No, not even then, when, inexplicably, the very moment felt like Home, when every molecule and atom of his being sang for his Forgotten Heart, when he could do nothing but stammer, eyes downcast, glancing up again - “I gave it away!” voice rising; the barometer of his fear. No, not now.

The angel’s songs began again with his young friend, Enheduanna’s encouragement, some time later. The Flood had happened, a time Aziraphale preferred forgetting for the pain and suffering to all – especially for how it crushed the Fire of his Heart – forever unnamed. Enheduanna’s gem-like hymn to her Terrible Goddess sounded like something from his own broken soul, like a sigh from the lips of that Sky-Serpent of the flaming hair, confusion and wonder ever hiding in his eyes. The angel recalls his friend, the Priestess’, words:

My Queen,  
You are all devouring in Your power,  
You kept on attacking like an attacking storm,  
Kept on blowing (louder) than the howling storm,  
Kept on thundering (louder) than Ishkur,  
Kept on moaning (louder) than the evil winds,  
Your feet grew not weary,  
You caused wailing to be uttered on the ‘lyre of lament.’1

Yes, that Child caught the character of both their Gods in a sharp-edged obsidian blade; at once both terrifying and unworthy of the adulation they demand.

And even so, always That One, that Creature, the Enemy – always the only protection, companion, reasonable acquaintance – flaming hair, the red of a supernova - not of hellfire -, and just a glimpse of it engenders a sense of total safety, surety, confidence. There is no doubt. Not with Crowley. Home.

Thousands of years… and poems are written, songs drafted. Always in code. “My brother sleeps at my feet, as I keep watch” hoping against hope that no one in THIS CULTURE and ERA knows that this was the way a woman declared her intention to marry a man in Old Judea in the time of Naomi and Ruth. “Golden eyes haunt my every step, I am hunted! Lo!” and the excitement is a bit too personal, joy a shade too intense, for the piece to be about an actual hunting trip. In every style, as they develop, Aziraphale writes them, daring never to sing aloud. On many themes, but always, he circles round again (as his demon does whenever they meet), to the diverse delights and beauties of Crowley. 

Perhaps one day, the Serpent will find the Treasure Boxes in the back room of the back room of A.Z. Fell, Bookseller. Or perhaps he already has.

CROWLEY

Crowley didn’t write poetry much until Quite Recently; it being a mess of structure, puns, and many other things only the angel wrangles well. Now that he does, it’s all free-flowing, pure emotion, evoked in as few words as possible, as intensely as possible. Form be damned because rules are made to be broken. How deliciously evil of him.

“I build things; I’m a maker,” the demon’d be the first to say. “I work with my hands; words are for artful sorts. You need a nebula with room to spare for more infant stars than you think you’ll need? I’m your creature. 

Need a mechanical solution to cause souls to fall to the Dark Lord? I’ve got you! Such things are technical feats. It only takes some tweaking of this spring there, that line of code here, and a fun bit of lurking in a construction zone at 3 a.m. GMT. Really, nothing to them. 

I could make you a crib sooner than write an elegiac poem on the bounties of that … dragon’s form, the shapeliness of his wings, the arch way he always says, ‘my dear.’ And that crib would be serviceable through all of time – unlike the poem, which would likely only consist of my failing to enunciate a single thought and looking like a fool.”

Sometimes, in his dreams, he hears faraway, lilting music about an angel with stars in his wings, auburn curls, eyes full of the wonder of the IS-ness of absolutely EVERYTHING. The voice is soothing. The voice is Home. Who sang to him so long ago? It feels like warm water soothing and cleansing eternally-unhealing wounds; keeping him safe, well, as safe as it’s possible for the Fallen to be; a demon, wrapped in improbable love.

Those dreams always inspire him; waking up his perpetually fearful heart, wanting to write Something, sing ANYTHING; but being Crowley, most often he mumble-sings under his breath, afraid to allow such feelings Voice - letting the verberations of the air spread out around him, wondering, always, if the One he sang about was Aware of the tidal wave set to drown them both if either of them Felt above a whisper.

These are hymns to soft blond curls, changeable eyes that like to be an astonishing blue, and a sumptuously pudgy dragon hoarding knowledge in a bookshop as though the books themselves were gold. The nefarious creature hoards all that Crowley tempts the humans with, always, and forever. Knowledge. The ferocious beast wears a golden pinky ring, wings suspiciously similar to an angel’s, scales that glitter and iridesce in golds, creams, whites, platinum. It's greedy for all the results of Crowley’s clever artifices as the Children learn, then make something entirely NEW of each. Books of prophecy, alchemy, songs of love – forbidden, taboo, and otherwise, secrets of the human body, secrets of the infernal (“I never told them ANY OF THAT!” A scandalized serpent emphatically declares.), histories of Children not unlike the Serpent and the Angel in their Truth. And on and on and on. The whole a monument to the dragon’s demon lover and his accomplishments among the Children of Adam, to how they pushed beyond even their foster-father’s Knowledge and built their own world! GLORIOUSSSS!

So clever, Crowley, pretending he’s singing a make-believe, instead of the very real tune, finally, finally, he sings his heart. A poem forms in air. A Song. Alive. Alive. Alive.

“Balm  
to a broken soul,  
repairer of the same  
in golden words,

gentle acts melting into brokenness -  
my Beloved One  
stands guard before the gate,

allowing none to pass  
until I give the word.  
I and no other.

And in his vigilance,  
I am home.  
Where none can harm me.

And where I am,  
I make him a world  
none can take from him

where all is joy, delight  
and one more slice of chiffon cake  
another brandy.

Yes,  
thank you,  
another.”

TOGETHER WE ARE FREE

And finally, after the End of the End of Days, their voices raised together in a paen, a hymn, to Love, without which, no God can even hope to matter, and all Creation can surpass them in worthiness and honor.

1 The Adoration of Innana of Ur, by Enheduanna, High Priestess. Stanza 3. http://classicalarthistory.weebly.com/library/enheduanna-poems, accessed 8/18/2019.


End file.
